Memories of a Madman

For the first sixteen years of her life, Ted Kaczynski was something of a fixture in Jamie Gehring's life.

Kaczynski lived only about half a mile from Butch Gehring's home, and Jamie would encounter him often during the time she spent in Lincoln with her dad. Exploring her memories of "Teddy" in light of the fact he is a killer responsible for three deaths and dozens of injuries is at the core of her book "Madman in the Woods."

The book explores her personal memories of Kaczynski and intertwines them with discoveries she made about him and his actions, as well discoveries about herself through five years of research, interviews, and reflection.

Still reeling from the death of her sister Tessa in 2017, Jamie began researching Kaczynski to help deal with her grief and to tell the story of her own memories, the relationship her dad had with Kaczynski and Butch's role in bringing him to justice.

"When I started writing this it was a book of short stories. It just sort of evolved into a braided memoir. Once I finished writing the short stories, it didn't feel personal enough," she said. "It didn't feel like I was really telling my own story or part of my dad's story. So, it definitely changed into what it is today ... my own story with Ted's history and what perceivably turned him into the person he is today."

Unlike other books about the Unabomber, Jamie's story evolves with her own memories. From remembering Kaczynski as a seemingly harmless hermit who held her as a baby and later brought her painted rocks as a toddler, to the unease she felt when she was around him as a teenager. Finally, to the devastating discoveries about his actions that she made as an adult researching Kaczynski's writings and interviewing his family members, investigators, neighbors, and victims.

"Through the years there was that intuition, there were those feelings that something is not right," she said. "I'm scared, I'm hiding in the closet while he's at the door, I'm terrified when I meet him in the woods...It was important to me to reconcile those, not changing the memories, just understanding them a bit more and the complexity in them."

As the book progresses, she interweaves Ted's journal entries, interviews, and victim testimony with her own recollections. "I wanted to show the entire picture, rather than just in a vacuum of my own experiences, or Ted's own experiences."

As Jamie explores Kaczynski's life, she looks at his early years and connects with his mother's feelings through her own experiences as a mom. She uncovers the way Kaczynski perceived his own childhood and how it differed from his families' memories. "It's something I felt was unique in the story; juxtaposing those different themes and those different human experiences."

It's an element that Ted's brother David thanked her for. "When he read...the final version, he emailed me and just really thanked me for trying to connect with his own Mom and her emotion and her struggles she faced when Ted was an infant, and then of course the discovery her son was a murder."

"There were things he went through in his childhood, that many people experience, which affected him through his life and how he became the person he is," Jamie said. "It was like a perfect storm throughout his life that created this person. Still, with all his methodical violent acts, there were those times he was still recognizable. I think that was what surprised me most while writing it."

However, that recognition shouldn't be mistaken for sympathy.

Throughout the book, Kaczynski's own journals provide information about some of Jamie's childhood recollections and often add new and painful perspectives on events in her and her family's lives.

"In the beginning I'm speaking from the heart of a child. I'm telling the story of my own childhood and my own experience and my own feelings as a kid, without the knowledge that Ted Kaczynski is a murderer," she said. "Through the book I'm discovering that he killed my dog, he pointed a rifle at my baby sister. I'm documenting the horrific testimony that was told ... and I don't think it's sympathetic to Ted. I think it shows the human connection, but it's very balanced and it really shows what a madman he was and how he destroyed so many lives. There's no making excuses for that; it's just understanding the story."

Jamie also contrasts Kaczynski with another well-known former Lincoln resident.

During his time here, Kaczynski espoused a love of nature and wild places. He grieved for the constructing of logging roads on favorite plateaus and bemoaned the noises of technology.

His response was to destroy logging and mining equipment, kill his neighbors' dogs and begin a bombing campaign. At just about the same time Kaczynski arrived in Lincoln, Cecil Garland was successful in advocating for creation of the Scapegoat Wilderness, preserving a wild, peaceful place that's generally a refuge from technology.

"(Garland) dedicated his life to conservation and activism, but he did it in an entirely different way, and he got results," Jamie said. "Just comparing his story to Ted's, was powerful in and of itself.

Throughout the book, as Jamie delves into Kaczynskis psyche, he father Butch remains front and center. His sawmill sat just a few hundred yards from Kaczynski's cabin. Butch's efforts to run his mill and manage this property, which all but surrounded Kaczynski's 1.4 acres, led to increasingly tense exchanges. Butch, who died in 2012, served as the eyes and ears for the FBI ahead of Kaczynski's 1996 arrest.

"I think the most powerful part of writing this was healing for me, and my own grief of losing Dad and losing Tessa. Being able to write about them and actually share my dad's role. I think that was just as important for me personally," Jamie said.

"Madman in the Woods" will be hitting the shelves in April. Jamie hopes to include Lincoln, Missoula, and Helena on her book tour.